


A Rose Is A Rose

by seimaisin



Category: Bandom, Hush Sound, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-31
Updated: 2008-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Library AU! Greta has a secret admirer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rose Is A Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a birthday present for [dragonsinger](http://dragonsinger.livejournal.com/).

Greta is untangling her messenger bag from the seatbelt of her car when Spencer yells. “Hey, Greta, come see this!”

Her bag comes free with one last tug, and she stumbles to keep from planting ass on asphalt. She looks over at Spencer, who seems to be studying something on the front door of the library. She groans. “Please tell me that Pete didn’t write poetry on the glass again.”

“No, I think Patrick put the fear of God in him last time.” Spencer looks back at her and grins. “Seriously, come here, it’s for you!”

Greta raises an eyebrow and wanders over. When she gets close enough to look around Spencer, she sees a red rose tied to the metal door handle with a length of plain white ribbon. A card dangles from the stem. “ _For Greta_ ,” it reads, in dark, scratchy handwriting. “For me?” she repeats, a little dumbly.

“Someone’s got a secret admiiiiiirerrrr,” Spencer sings, as Greta tugs the ribbon to free the flower from the door. She smacks him in the shoulder, but he just grins down at her as he unlocks the front door.

Inside, there’s a gigantic stack of books on the front desk. Spencer looks at the stack with dismay. “What the fuck happened here?”

“I fired the new girl last night. She was more interested in texting than shelving.” Patrick’s voice comes from behind the stack – suddenly, Greta sees a fedora appear over the top. “So guess what we get to do?”

“Her job?” Greta guesses.

“Bingo.” Patrick appears from behind the books. His tie matches the green band on his hat. Greta smiles. “What do you have there?”

Greta looks down at the rose. Spencer vaults over the front desk, knocking a stack of papers to the ground in the process. Patrick glares, but Spencer ignores him. “Greta has a secret admirer,” Spencer tells him.

When Patrick looks back at her, Greta shrugs. “This was tied to the front door. It had my name on it. Did you see it when you came in?”

“I came in the back door,” Patrick says. “A secret admirer, huh?”

“I guess.” Greta smells the rose. “It’s nice.”

And it is nice, she thinks. It’s not like she’s had a date in months, not since she and Bob broke up amicably. (He’s seeing someone else now, and it only causes a small twinge when he tells her about the new girlfriend. It’s not that she wants him back – they’d kill each other, and they both know it – but there’s something cosmically unfair in the idea that he has someone now and she doesn’t.) She spends most of her time at the library these days, working enough hours to pay the bills on the first apartment she’s ever had to pay for on her own. It’s not like she has much of a social life. So, it’s rather nice, that someone cares enough to leave her a gift. She likes feeling a little special.

Another rose shows up the next morning, and Greta looks sideways at her coworkers. She dismisses them almost immediately, though – Spencer rides to work with her, because his car died a month ago, so even if he was inclined he wouldn’t have the means. Patrick she considers for a longer moment, but when he had a crush on a patron a few months back, he mostly just stammered and blushed and avoided being at the desk when she came in. He’s never exhibited any of that behavior with her – mostly, he treats Greta and Spencer like his wayward children, despite only being a couple of years older than them – so Greta is pretty positive that the roses aren’t coming from him.

After the third rose, Greta starts to think about the patrons. They have a decent number of regulars, a surprising number of which are guys. Sure, there are a few women – like Victoria, who still causes Patrick to stutter every once in a while, and Maja, who looks so intimidating that no one bothers to mock her for her Harlequin habit. (In fact, Spencer has taken to setting the new ones aside for her. Greta still hasn’t figured out if it’s because Spencer wants her or because he’s angling for a spot as her second in command when she rules the world.) But, their library has a large number of male regulars, all of whom Greta starts to look at sideways.

Her first suspect is Pete. Pete’s the loudest of the regulars, and the most likely to engage in grand, romantic gestures. He once told Greta a story about standing outside of his ex-girlfriend’s house with a boombox, just like Lloyd Dobler. Pete comes in several days a week, after work, dressed in slacks and crisp, pressed shirts with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, showing off a mass of dark tattoos. He convinced Patrick to create a gigantic display for the children’s section that includes a wall for kids to color directly on; actually a pretty ingenious idea, but Patrick only admits it when Pete is well out of earshot. Pete loves the children’s section, and actually spends an hour or two a week sitting in the storytelling corner, reading aloud.

Pete also grins with unfeigned surprise when Patrick tells him about Greta’s secret admirer. “Dude, that’s awesome, I totally want a secret admirer. Patrick, will you send me flowers?”

“First of all, no, and second, if I did, it wouldn’t be a secret, would it?”

“I’d pretend to be surprised.”

“Maybe you should get your girlfriend to send you flowers,” Patrick says.

Pete makes a face. “Nah, that definitely wouldn’t be a fun secret.” He pokes Greta in the arm. “Tell me when you figure out who it is!”

Greta considers other options. Joe’s too scared of his girlfriend to have done it, and Andy would never endorse such a blatantly gender-stereotypical way of expressing affection. Gabe’s a maybe, she thinks, except that he loves attention enough that he’d probably do any wooing up-front and in person. Travis flirts openly with Greta, but he also flirts with every other person with female parts, and some without, so she doesn’t figure she’s special there, either.

On the fourth day of roses, Spencer’s roommates come in to the library, and Greta starts to wonder.

Spencer has three roommates – how the four of them fit into their tiny two-bedroom apartment, she doesn’t know, but they all seem to manage pretty cheerfully. Brendon is the most boisterous of the four, and the one who comes in to bother Spencer most often. On the fourth day, he bounces into the library around noon, clutching two McDonalds bags. “Cheeseburgers for everyone!” he yells, earning dirty looks from the older women browsing through the DVDs.

“I lent you money to do your laundry yesterday,” Spencer says. “How do you have the cash to treat everyone to lunch?”

“Maybe I won the lottery, you never know!”

“If you won the lottery, you can turn back around and go buy me a steak for lunch.”

Brendon sticks his tongue out at Spencer, while Greta reaches into a bag to pull out a burger. “Thank you, Brendon, I forgot to bring my lunch today!”

Brendon beams. “See, Spence, someone appreciates me!”

“Seriously, you’d better not have spent my money on cheeseburgers. Your clothes smell like ass.”

“Chill. Ryan gave me money for lunch. He told me to bring you something, too, and McDonald’s was having their five-for-five dollars thing.”

“I should probably ask where Ryan got the money, but you know what, I’m just not going to bother.”

Spencer swipes a burger and walks away, but not before cuffing Brendon on the back of the head. Brendon yelps in offense, and Greta giggles. Brendon hops up onto the counter – earning a dirty look from Patrick, which he ignores – and grins widely at Greta. “So! I hear you have a stalker!”

“I’m getting roses. I hope it’s not a creepy stalker. That would be a total buzzkill!” Greta hasn’t really thought about that. She’s been enjoying the attention too much to consider that maybe her secret admirer is actually the old guy who comes in to read National Geographic every month, the one who mumbles to himself and always has grease stains on the front of his shirt.

“I’m sure whoever it is, he isn’t creepy,” Brendon says hastily. “I’m sure it’s, like, your true love, ready to come in and sweep you off your feet! He’s probably just shy, or thinks you’re intimidating, or something.”

Greta looks sideways at Brendon, but he launches into a monologue about a song he’s trying to learn how to play on the trumpet, which not only distracts Greta but also brings Patrick into the conversation. Spencer yells at them a half hour later when he realizes that he’s the only person actually working at the desk. By that point, Greta has been complete distracted from the subject of her admirer.

Ryan rushes in sometime after Brendon’s gone – his eyes are wide, even though the rest of his face is expressionless. He leans on the desk in front of Greta and Spencer. “I’m behind on my research. I need every book you have on Hinduism. Or monkeys.”

“Don’t you know how to use the internet?” Spencer asks.

“The internet is frequently _wrong_ , Spence.”

Greta smothers her laugh, and doesn’t ask what Hinduism and monkeys have in common. It’s better not to, she’s learned. Ryan is a writer; a fantastic writer, actually, Greta was the first person to buy his self-published chapbook last year. However, his process is a little … odd. She types while Spencer continues to mock; when she hands Ryan a short printout of books and shelf location, he looks briefly confused, then breaks out into a brilliant smile. “See,” he says to Spencer, “Greta loves me more than you do.”

“Greta doesn’t have to live with you,” Spencer mutters.

Ryan, Greta thinks, is a distinct possibility. She tries out the idea in her mind, but finds herself ambivalent. Ryan’s a nice guy, but … not necessarily what she wants in a boyfriend. She’d really rather have someone who remembers to leave the house more than once every four days.

Spencer’s last roommate wanders in while Ryan is still lost in the world religion aisle. Jon doesn’t announce himself the way that Brendon and Ryan do; he just wanders over to Spencer and starts talking quietly. They both turn their heads and grin when Ryan tosses a book out into the open area. Patrick grunts in Ryan’s direction. “You break it, you buy it,” he calls into the religion aisle.

Greta laughs quietly and heads over to the mystery section to shelve books. She’s wearing heels today, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea now that she has to climb the stepladder. But, they were the perfect color blue to match her new sweater, and she couldn’t resist. So, she kicks them off before climbing, and resigns herself to really dirty feet. She and Patrick usually send Spencer out to replace the books on the high shelves, but he and Jon are gesturing wildly about something with their heads bent together, and Greta doesn’t really want to interrupt.

Mostly, though, Greta doesn’t want to go over there and betray how badly she’d really like her secret admirer to be Jon.

Jon is … well, Jon’s kind of adorable, with laughing eyes and a quick grin behind a dark beard. He’s a photographer, in business with his best friend; every once in a while, the powers that be at the library hire him to come take promotional photos at the kids’ events. Greta has a few of his photos hanging on the wall in her studio apartment – one of Pete sitting cross-legged on the floor with a captivated audience of five-year-olds gathered around him, one of Spencer riding his skateboard through the parking lot, and one of a stack of books in a sunbeam, with dust particles shining in the air like tiny fairies. The first time Greta met Jon, he was crouched in front of the library, taking photos of a family of turtles crossing the parking lot. When he looked up to find her staring, he grinned. “Gotta catch them before they run off!” It was stupidly endearing, and she laughed harder than she meant to. She’s been trying to look reasonably cool ever since.

While she’s shelving, she hears Spencer snort laughter. When she turns her head, Jon’s shaking his head, while Spencer looks at Greta, grinning. Greta checks to make sure there are no kids in the general vicinity, and then makes a rude gesture. Spencer just grins wider.

When Greta finishes her task, she looks down to see Jon standing next to the stepladder. He offers her his hand gallantly, and she takes it, smiling and trying not to blush. She hops to the ground, skipping the last rung, and stumbles just enough to knock into Jon. He grasps her arm and laughs. When she straightens up, she’s looking him in the eye – he’s just her height, which she thinks maybe shouldn’t be as attractive to her as it is. “Hi,” he says, smiling.

“Hi,” she replies. He doesn’t take his hand off her arm. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He finally releases her arm, and Greta retrieves her shoes. When she puts them on, she’s taller than he is. Jon stands there for a moment more before Spencer calls him, laughter in his voice. Greta feels her heart race. She cautions herself, however, not to draw conclusions. It’s still possible, she tells herself, that the roses are from National Geographic Man.

“So,” she says, after clearing her throat, “what have you been up to lately? I haven’t seen you around for a while.”

Jon shrugs. “There’s a hot air balloon festival happening across town this week, and they hired me to take photos. Lots of early mornings, which are pretty hellish. I’m totally a night owl.” He gives her a crooked smile.

Early mornings … which, Greta thinks, would give him the opportunity to leave roses before she gets to work. She feels her lips twitch, but clamps down on the smile that’s threatening to erupt. She hears Patrick call her name. “Gotta go,” she says, somewhat sadly. “Will you be around tomorrow?”

The smile that splits Jon’s face is almost enough to make Greta absolutely sure. “I can be, yeah.”

“Cool. I’d …” She smiles. “I’d like that.”

The next morning, the rose on the front door is attached to a photograph – Greta, standing on the stepstool, a book in her hand, her bare foot dangling off the step.

When Jon comes in that afternoon, Greta is wearing the rose in her hair. She gives him her biggest smile. “Hey,” she says as he approaches. “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”

Jon’s smile is bright enough to light up the room. Greta ignores the cat calls from various parts of the library as she leans over the desk and presses her lips to his.


End file.
